Jesse Singal

Singal in 2021.

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Jesse Singal (1983–) is an American journalist, podcaster, and Substack blogger who specializes in needling progressives on controversial social issues all the while putting on the front of being a "moderate" liberal who is supposedly just writing the truth about the stories that impact our world. Sound familiar? Singal has a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University. He became known for his works on Gamergate and later on transgender people (with brief crossover). His works on gender identity attempted, among other things, to define conversion therapy contrary to the findings of the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or major medical organizations at the time.

Fellow transphobic cosplay liberal Katie Herzog, who wrote controversial articles for The Stranger about detransitioners before leaving the paper as a result of public controversy, co-hosts the podcast Blocked and Reported with Singal. The pair will sometimes needle both sides, such as when they argued that child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was technically not a pedophile. In the media world, this kind of pedantry earns one the label "heterodox".

In the past, he edited a social science blog for New York magazine, where he published riveting articles about Gamergate, straight men having "bud sex" with each other, attraction to middle-aged people being "a sexual orientation", and in fact some less strange topics than those. Singal's spats with alt-right bozos like Baked Alaska, Candace Owens, and Mike Cernovich probably ended up being a point in his favor by reverse-association.

Gamergate

For more information, see: Timeline of Gamergate

Singal used to write video game reviews for the Boston Globe, so naturally Gamergate would have caught his attention. Beginning in 2014, he wrote articles critical of Gamergate as a "supernova of dysfunctional male angst", harassment, and strange conspiracy theories. One of his top-read articles from this period was probably Gamergate Should Stop Lying to Journalists — and Itself, in which he said:

“”I think Gamergate is primarily about anger at progressive people who care about feminism and transgender rights and mental health and whatever else is getting involved in gaming, and by what gamergaters see as overly solicitous coverage of said individuals and their games. And here's the thing: That's fine! It’s an opinion I happen to disagree with, but it's a coherent, concrete viewpoint. Say what you will about the tenets of anti-progressivism, dude, but at least it's an ethos.

—Jesse Singal

Despite this, he soon started complaining about "Tumblr Twitter" following backlash to his article on Zucker. Comparing "Tumblr Twitter" to Gamergate, he stated: "Guys GamerGate is just doing their smug bullshit. Tumblr twitter was 100000 times worse and more abusive tonight. No comparison." This was after Singal used the hashtag "#GamerGate" in response to a negative post about his article that had nothing to do with GamerGate. In response to accusations this was a method to bring harassment against the person being quote-tweeted, he said: "I didn't intentionally get anyone harassed. A lot of these people are not stable, at least the ones here tonight". According to Julia Serano, he (among other things) later again added the #GamerGate hashtag to a Medium blogpost criticizing someone, before removing the tag.

Singal later also began distinguishing between "video-game culture warriors, or VGCWs" and Gamergaters. In 2024, Singal and Herzog released a podcast episode on GamerGate and they rip on Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest as well as her ex-boyfriend and their "totally broken relationship". Singal states GamerGate was partly about gamers feeling slighted by Jezebel-reading "feminist Mean Girl types who did seem to enjoy some mainstream cache and acceptance, they were the cool kids." He adds the anti-GamerGate feminists were angry at gamers for being "entitled white males", and that it's "not going to go over well to tell them they're privileged, because of how they felt". He then compares it to "wandering around in an opioid-ravaged town in West Virginia lecturing about white privilege".

Transgender people

2015 Galileo gambit

See the main article on this topic: J. Michael Bailey

In December 2015, Singal wrote an article for New York magazine titled "Why Some of the Worst Attacks on Social Science Have Come From Liberals". This was about Alice Dreger's book Galileo's Middle Finger, and the topics it dealt with, such as the controversies surrounding J. Michael Bailey including his endorsement of Ray Blanchard's typology of transgender women. According to Singal years later, this "review-essay" for Dreger's book was his "introduction to these controversies" regarding trans issues.

Singal and Dreger correctly point out that some critics of Bailey had escalated beyond reasonable discourse. However via some Galileo gambit-like posturing (perhaps expected given Dreger's book title), Singal asserts that this amounted to an attack on "legitimate science", despite Bailey and Blanchard's theories being very dubious at best on any thorough examination. However, it could have been that Singal didn't quite grasp how strong their claims were, as demonstrated by this passage:

The notion that there might be a cultural component to the decision to transition, or that sexuality, rather than a hardwired gender identity, could be a factor, complicates this gender-identity-only narrative. It also brings sexuality back into a conversation that some trans activists have been trying to make solely about gender identity — roughly parallel to the way some gay-rights activists sweep conversations about actual gay sexuality under the rug, preferring to focus on idealized, unthreatening-to-heterosexuals portrayals of committed gay relationships between clean-cut, taxpaying adults.

Their theories didn't posit "sexuality could be a factor" so much as they asserted it was a central motivating factor behind transgender identity in all cases, even when the person in question was asexual. Singal attempted to compare the opposition to this wildly unsupported theory (along with a sprawling labyrinth of other strange claims), which he either did not fully grasp or still accepted as "legitimate science" despite understanding its claims, with "conservative lawmakers and organizations who have refused to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change". Even if this is quite wrong, it may not necessarily say very much about Singal himself, individually, since he is a science journalist and not himself an expert on these topics (nor trying to be one).

CAMH youth gender clinic

“”Zucker didn't do conversion therapy

—Jesse Singal

“”Conversion therapy: Efforts to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression through behavioral health or medical interventions.

—The US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

“”Zucker believes that toleration and encouragement of feminine play and dress prevents the child from accepting his maleness. … Inconsistent parenting like this is ineffective in stamping out any kind of unwanted behavior.

—J. Michael Bailey, Zucker's "close colleague and friend"

Singal's 2016 articles about another clinician, Ken Zucker, present another picture of an expert besieged by "activists". Zucker was accused of conversion therapy practices for at least some of his young patients. Zucker was ultimately fired from his institution, the Child Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), some months after CAMH's home of Ontario, Canada banned conversion therapy practices against LGBT minors. Singal was contacted (according to the two in question) by biologist Julia Serano, and one of Zucker's disgruntled former patients (Erika Muse); Serano wanted to speak on "the history behind these kinds of clinics". Neither of them were quoted in Singal's articles on Zucker. Muse alleges that Singal "never even responded".

Bioethicist Florence Ashley, who holds that the practices at the clinic under Zucker were conversion therapy, wrote that said practices differed from some earlier forms of conversion therapy, such as the practices of George Rekers (of NARTH) and Ole Ivar Lovaas (who themselves in turn cited earlier work by Richard Green and John Money on the subject). To quote in part:

Their [Kenneth Zucker and Susan Bradley's] proposed approach involves extensive testing and play psychotherapy and directs parents to discourage gender non-conforming behavior, to encourage participation in gender-conforming activities, and to encourage socializing with children of the same gender assigned at birth (Zucker et al., 2012). With regards to the treatment protocol, one substantial departure from the approach proposed by Rekers and Lovaas is their critique of behavioral therapy and reinforcement techniques. Their critique, however, does not lie in the radical or unethical nature of Rekers and Lovaas’ approach to gender non-conforming behavior but rather in its limitations. According to Zucker and Bradley, “[i]t is likely that the procedures used by behavior therapists do not fully alter internal gender schemas, and that as a result the children revert to their cross-gender behavioral preferences in the absence of external cues or incentives” (Zucker & Bradley, 1995, p. 273). As a result, they remove some behavioral interventions (they do not suggest a token system, for instance) and add other interventions intending to alter internal gender schemas. The underlying theory remains the same: marked gender non-conformity in children is disordered and must be corrected (Zucker, 2006, pp. 543–544).

Another departure from Rekers and Lovaas is their view of homosexuality. Unlike Rekers and Lovaas, they do not defend avoiding homosexuality as a legitimate clinical goal. Zucker and Bradley’s views on sexual orientation have evolved over the years and noticeably become more progressive. In their 1995 book, they were partly critical of seeking to discourage adult homosexuality they also demonstrated clear ambivalence towards it (p. 269): "Given that most parents, not surprisingly, prefer that their children not develop a homosexual orientation, the contemporary clinician must carefully think through the ethics of instituting treatment for this reason and the empirical evidence that treatment can have this effect." In 2012, they explained that “that the goal of treatment is not to prevent the child from developing a future homosexual sexual orientation”, though it may remain the goal of parents (Zucker et al., 2012, p. 390). It is unclear what is the ethical significance of no longer seeking to avoid later homosexuality if it continues to view childhood gender non-conformity as inherently problematic and adopts interventions similar to those of Rekers and Lovaas. Discouraging children who will grow up to be gay men from being effeminate is arguably a form of homophobia. Indeed, targeting gender non-conformity is one of the primary ways in which homophobia operates. Whether or not the ultimate goal of discouraging homosexuality is present, the proximate approach of discouraging and altering gender non-conformity remains.

The strict separation between preventing LGBQ outcomes and preventing trans outcomes used to distinguish Rekers and Lovaas’ conversion therapy and approaches that oppose gender affirmation, such as Zucker and Bradley’s corrective approach to children, is illusory. When it comes to youth, conversion therapy has historically targeted gender non-conformity, not gender identity or sexual orientation per se.

Singal relays a number of talking points from people who worked at the clinic, such as a comparison between restraining gender-nonconforming behavior in children and preventing children from watching too much television. He also presents an argument from some people at the clinic that their critics were simply conflating sexual orientation and gender identity, and were somehow confused about this. Singal also appears to find this meaningful because by his retelling of the CAMH-GIC clinicians perspective, sexual orientation "can't be changed" but gender identity is different and "isn't some hardwired thing". (Incidentally, Singal also wrote an article in 2014 highly skeptical of how hardwired sexual orientation is — framed in terms of a scientist versus "gay rights activists", familiarly.)

Singal says the children under Zucker's treatment would "have an increased likelihood of eventually identifying as gay or bisexual". Coming into play, then, is Ashley's above-quoted argument that clinical approaches which attempt to stamp out gender-nonconforming behavior in gay people are arguably homophobic, regardless of whether these approaches attempt to change a person's sexual orientation. When Singal published his articles on Zucker, the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defined conversion therapy as, based on consensus statements from a number of relevant expert groups: "efforts to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression".

Zucker's clinic previously diagnosed patients with "gender identity disorder in children" (GIDC), a now-antiquated diagnosis that had long been criticized for "undermin[ing], rather than support[ing], [a] child's well-being", with one critique from 2004 noting that it pathologized gender non-conformity; the 2004 paper also notes, "According to Zucker and Bradley (1995), the treatment of children diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder is usually undertaken to reduce their experience of social ostracism and its psychopathological sequelae, or to prevent their becoming either homosexual or transsexual adults." An article in the November 1997 issue of The Advocate contains allegations (corroborated by the government of San Francisco a year earlier) the pathologization of homosexuality continued in some cases under the guise of GID diagnoses. The article also quotes Zucker, who said: "[Joseph] Nicolosi may want to pathologize homosexuality, but most of us want to make a child feel better about being a boy or a girl. If parents want their kids to be straight, it's because they want them to have an easier life."

Thus, this overly-broad version of the diagnosis was used in many cases to clump together gender-nonconforming, gay, and/or trans people alike. Zucker and colleagues argued as late as 2012 that "prevention of transsexualism" could be a desirable treatment goal under some circumstances. Zucker himself helped to reform the GIDC diagnosis in 2013, which included its reconstitution as "gender dysphoria"; his appointment to the committee dedicated to this reorganization was met with some controversy.

In 1990, Zucker and Bradley wrote that boys with high vocal pitch and flamboyant wrist posture have indicators for possible GIDC that could cause "social ostracism" (citing George Rekers). They add that "high tolerance for the continuation of the cross-gender behaviour" could result in "risk for post-pubertal gender dysphoria" unless there is "intervention or limit-setting". In another 1990 paper, Zucker writes of "rationale for the treatment of cross-gender identification in children [for] the prevention of transsexualism in adulthood", and adds: "My own clinical experience suggests that treatment is most effective before puberty and that the desire to change sex becomes much more difficult to shift in adolescence (Zucker et al. 1986)."

Accounts appeared in news profiles of Zucker's patients, such as this one on NPR:

Whenever Zucker encounters a child younger than 10 with gender identity disorder, he tries to make the child comfortable with the sex he or she was born with. So, to treat Bradley, Zucker explained to Carol that she and her husband would have to radically change their parenting. Bradley would no longer be allowed to spend time with girls. He would no longer be allowed to play with girlish toys or pretend that he was a female character. Zucker said that all of these activities were dangerous to a kid with gender identity disorder. He explained that unless Carol and her husband helped the child to change his behavior, as Bradley grew older, he likely would be rejected by both peer groups. Boys would find his feminine interests unappealing. Girls would want more boyish boys. Bradley would be an outcast.

Or this in The Atlantic:

When he was 4, the boy, John, had tested at the top of the gender-dysphoria scale. … His parents, well-educated urbanites, let John grow his hair long and play with whatever toys he preferred. But then a close friend led them to Zucker, and soon they began to see themselves as “in denial,” recalls his mother, Caroline. … When they reversed course, they dedicated themselves to the project with a thoroughness most parents would find exhausting and off-putting. They boxed up all of John’s girl-toys and videos and replaced them with neutral ones. Whenever John cried for his girl-toys, they would ask him, “Do you think playing with those would make you feel better about being a boy?” and then would distract him … They turned their house into a 1950s kitchen-sink drama, intended to inculcate respect for patriarchy, in the crudest and simplest terms: “Boys don’t wear pink, they wear blue,” they would tell him, or “Daddy is smarter than Mommy — ask him.” If John called for Mommy in the middle of the night, Daddy went, every time. … Recently, John was in the basement watching the Grammys. When Caroline walked downstairs to say good night, she found him draped in a blanket, vamping. He looked up at her, mortified.

By the way, Singal is confident enough to say: "Zucker didn't do conversion therapy".

It has been suggested that the accusations Zucker practiced conversion therapy were discredited, partly because CAMH paid a settlement and formally apologized to him due to the sloppiness of an external review commissioned by the institution, stating: "CAMH apologizes without reservation to Dr. Zucker for the flaws in the process that led to errors in the report not being discovered". The youth clinic remained closed. One inaccuracy present in said review included a false claim that Zucker referred to a young patient as a "hairy little vermin"; Singal expressed skepticism towards this claim in his 2016 articles and himself helped to uncover that it was likely false. However, suspicions that Zucker practiced conversion therapy never needed to hinge on whether he openly insulted his patients, or whether this particular review was especially accurate. Singal calls the "hairy little vermin" claim the "most spectacular" and "most serious allegation" in the review. It could well have been merely the most spectacular one — but it doesn't have much to do with the serious allegations of conversion therapy practices that could have caused more lasting psychological harm than an insult.

2018 Atlantic cover story

“”The voices Singal leads with and chooses to center … create an unbalanced and woefully incomplete depiction of the trans community.

—

Perhaps most notoriously, his 2018 article in The Atlantic appeared as a cover story for the magazine's print edition with the title "Your Child Says She's Trans. She Wants Hormones And Surgery. She's 13." The New Republic reported in 2019 that this was the only 21^st century cover feature about any transgender topics that The Atlantic had heretofore published. The magazine's cover matter was controversial by itself, as it also included a photo of a transgender model who did not go by she/her pronouns, next to that same title. According to the Poynter Institute, who interviewed the model in question, he "had no idea he was even being considered for the cover." He stated: "It pretty much outed me and it was such a weird time." Poynter also reported that strangers in New York City began to recognize him due to the magazine cover. The article's title was later changed to "When Children Say They're Trans" in the magazine's online edition.

The article itself portrays a lack of oversight for gender-affirming care, such as hormones and surgery, as a significant problem for transgender children in the United States, saying that these children too often receive such care only to change their minds. The article was roundly criticized by many trans people and advocates for the trans community, some of whom noted that even at the time, Singal had a history of transphobic and/or misleading articles taking a similar position. A number of publications critiqued Singal's article, including Slate, The New Republic, Wired, Logo, Advocate, TransAdvocate, and This.

In the ThinkProgress critique, they argued among other things that Singal was too light on direct citations. The critique also stated that although Singal never directly mentions the unproven "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD) hypothesis in his article, he interviewed a psychiatrist to whom he posed "questions about ROGD and transition regret." Singal did directly write about "social contagion", which was a key speculative proposal in the first paper published about ROGD; in the Atlantic piece, Singal wrote that "some anecdotal evidence suggests that social forces can play a role in a young person's gender questioning." He then proceeds to cite third-hand accounts — clinicians who heard from young transgender patients who in turn claimed other people their age were merely pretending to be transgender "for attention". Although it occurs to Singal that peer pressure can lead young people to be more impressionable in some ways, it somehow doesn't occur to him that it can also lead them to be overly judgemental of each other.

The ThinkProgress critique also mentions that in at least one instance, a parent interviewed for the Atlantic article was from an anti-trans website called 4thWaveNow — which is not disclosed in the article — incidentally, this was one of the very same websites whose members were in the first place surveyed to cobble together the ROGD hypothesis as part of the Littman 2018 ROGD study. Julia Serano also wrote a rough, lengthy timeline of "ROGD" and "social contagion" hypotheses — 4thWaveNow figures heavily into said timeline.

The Atlantic themselves published a series of much shorter articles responding to Singal's, though the original article doesn't link to these responses in any apparent way. One response written by sociologist Tey Meadow especially focused on the first "desister" mentioned in his article, who was not actually diagnosed formally with gender dysphoria. Meadow criticizes Singal's framing and "loaded language":

To position Claire as a 'desister' in the way Singal did is to participate in an inherently stigmatizing discourse with a very particular and damaging social history. The frames journalists use to discuss these controversial issues are themselves political and moral decisions, and ones of great consequence. … It's worth interrogating the origins and development of the idea of 'desistence.' This is not a value-neutral term. As the trans writer Julia Serano has noted, citing academic research, in criminological contexts, 'desistence' is used to denote the cessation of offensive or antisocial behavior. … It comes from an outmoded psychology organized around the assumption that there are only two forms of gender: normal and disordered. A person was once pathological or disordered, but now they are back on 'normal' ground. The idea that some children desist functions to support efforts to socialize children out of gender deviance, and to interpret those who do desist or re-transition as victims of abuse or false consciousness. (They were 'pushed too quickly into transition' or 'too young to really understand who or what they were.') But now, there are increasing numbers of clinicians who reject all of these premises, who don't think that trans identities are any less desirable than cisgender identities.

Sam Seder criticized Singal's Atlantic cover story not so much on its technical merits but, essentially, on how he perceived its ultimate effects on the national conversation about transgender topics that could have negative effects beyond what Singal may agree with; he compared the dynamics of this to Sam Harris's 2005 The Huffington Post article called "In Defense of Torture", published amidst a national conversation about the use of torture (though Seder acknowledges the "extreme" nature of this analogy). Singal's article in The Atlantic was ultimately cited in at least one "federal lawsuit seeking to roll back the rights of transgender individuals." Seder was not alone in observing this impact. The article also worried one of Singal's own sources, Carey Callahan, a detransitioner interviewed for the Atlantic feature.

After the article was published, some internal communications were leaked between Singal and other journalists. In which, Singal compares trans people disagreeing with him about desistance to Jews who believed in "Israel's righteousness" after the Holocaust, arguing they both have "groupthink" from being "insular communities forged by marginalization". Also bringing up Julia Serano, who has a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics, he insinuated she isn't "more qualified to write about about^[sic] the tricky science stuff going on here than I am", despite Singal not actually being a scientist.

Since the Atlantic article was published, Singal has positioned himself as, in the words of M.K. Anderson (writing four years later in 2022), "a cisgender, self-appointed expert on all things trans".

Jamie Reed

“”Emma Vigeland: Has Jamie Reed been discredited, or no? … Jesse Singal: She has not been discredited.

—The Majority Report with Sam Seder, September 2023

“”Contrary to Reed's claim that the center prescribed hormones sometimes after just one visit, parents and patients said it took multiple appointments over a period of months or longer to reach that point in treatment, describing a deliberate and methodical process. … Also speaking out is Jess Jones, a transgender former co-worker of Reed's, whom the Post-Dispatch reported “bristled at the way they said Reed sometimes spoke about patients.” They said that Reed had wanted patients to take an IQ test before being given access to puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones in order to confirm their ability to consent.

—Intelligencer, March 2023

In 2023, Jamie Reed, an ex-employee for Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, leaked purported patient information and claimed poor practices took place at the clinic. This ultimately led to formal complaints concerning alleged HIPAA violations. Many families served by the clinic disputed Reed's key claims. An internal review by Washington University also failed to verify her claims. Despite this, Bari Weiss's The Free Press, Jesse Singal, and even The New York Times lent some credence to Reed's claims.

According to Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), Reed is affiliated with Genspect (designated a hate group by the SPLC in 2024), and made "incredibly bizarre claims, suggesting a lack of knowledge about gender-affirming treatments" such as that the treatments should be tested in animals. Reed also claimed that puberty blockers caused liver damage in one patient, which was directly disputed by the family of said patient, who said it was instead caused by a COVID-19 medication. Per Them, Reed claimed "that puberty blockers cause menopause, that TikTok turns kids trans, that trans identity spreads through social contagion, and that a child literally identified as an attack helicopter." Reed further claimed other children at the clinic identified as a "mushroom", or a "rock". Drawing from her exchanges with Jesse Singal, some commentators saw contradictions between her own statements. Even Singal seemed to see contradictions.

Concerning Reed's claim that a teenager who was a patient at the clinic identified as a "communist attack helicopter", Singal stated: "It could certainly be the case that Reed is not telling the truth, but she provided me with full blow-by-blow details of the incident that sparked the helicopter-child reference in her affidavit. And it lines up with what has happened elsewhere. … When I asked Erica Anderson if she found Reed's claim credible, she said one of her own patients recently said they identified as a raccoon. So, yes." Three years prior, Singal wrote a blog post where the first sentence was: "'I sexually identify as an attack helicopter' is a meme used to make fun of trans people."

2024 Summer Olympics

In 2024, Singal insulted the work of some mainstream journalists — skeptical reporting towards highly dubious accusations that Olympian athlete Imane Khelif (a cisgender woman, mind you) was transgender or intersex; Singal called reporting by Axios "absolutely bankrupt, pathetic journalism" and suggested people read an article by Quillette instead of one by The Associated Press. (Quillette often hosts racist and eugenicist writers, and there were suspicions that the controversy around Khelif's sex was fueled by racial prejudice.)

The original (and denied) accusations that Khelif is intersex stemmed, under strange circumstances, from the International Boxing Association (IBA), a discredited Russian-run sports body known among other things for its ties to Russian organized crime, drug trafficking, and the Russian state-run gas company Gazprom. The IBA began claiming that Khelif was intersex after she defeated an until-then undefeated Russian competitor. The International Olympic Committee expelled the IBA, and accused it of fueling a "disinformation campaign against the Olympic movement." The IBA has contradicted its own claims about Khelif, once stating she did not fail a testosterone test, and another time claiming that she did. Separate unverified reports of a "leak" appeared in French media claiming Khelif is intersex, though if true this would regardless make her an intersex woman rather than a man.

Apologetics for pedophiles

See the main article on this topic: Pedophilia

“”The area of sex research where both left and right are both most committed to motivated-reasoning-fueled wrongness is pedophilia

—Jesse Singal

In Singal's coverage of the topic for New York magazine, where he wrote a story about a British charity hotline for pedophiles whom he claims "endlessly shaming, ostracizing, and punishing pedophiles may do more harm than good" as well as an article criticizing the progressive internet tabloid Salon for removing the essay "I'm a pedophile, but not a monster" by Todd Nickerson from its website in the wake of public outrage over Milo Yiannopoulos's pro-pedophilia comments, saying the essay was in no way promoting sexual abuse of children and arguing that we as a society should listen to voices like Nickerson's in order to be understand issues like pedophilia better and learn how to combat it.

In these examples, Singal often gives pedophiles the benefit of the doubt, while glossing over the possibility of these individuals lying about their behavior and intentions in order to appear more harmless than they actually are, which sexual predators are often known to do. Compare this to other journalists investigating self-proclaimed "virtuous pedophiles": some of whom have warned that it is almost impossible to corroborate any of their stories, with Alexander McBride noting in his Vice News piece on one such online group that "many of these claims [of not offending] cannot be verified. Perhaps some are using VirPed as a cover-up; perhaps some, who were even more daring, saw my photo story as a way to prove they had nothing to hide. I cannot guarantee that this is not the case and I can understand why many would be suspicious."

Singal justifies these stances by portraying pedophilia less as an irredeemable crime and more as a tragic condition misunderstood by the public, while claiming this framework is validated by scientific research and helps keep children safe from abusers.

In their Blocked and Reported podcast, Singal and Herzog dedicated much of episode 80 to discussing "gold-star pedophiles" (apparently Dan Savage's term), i.e. pedophiles who endeavor not to molest children. Singal comments that much of their coverage of the subject is informed by James Cantor. Cantor is a crank psychologist/sexologist who infamously has advocated integrating pedophiles with the LGBT movement, worked for conservative Christian Alliance Defending Freedom in the past as an expert witness, and endorsed Ray Blanchard's widely debunked "autogynephilia" theory. Herzog refers to Cantor as "one of the foremost researchers on pedophilia".

In the episode, it is argued that pedophilia is essentially a sexual orientation, and that stigmatizing pedophilia has potentially caused more harm than good. Herzog, arguing against an article by Anna Slatz about the pro-pedophile organization Prostasia, says fictional pedophilic erotica should be legal for "free speech" reasons, also contrasting it with "actual kiddie porn" and citing conversations she had with pedophiles who claim this and other forms of fictional depictions of sex with children are "helpful" to prevent child molestation. She says that a rapist was charged for publishing written/drawn pedophilic erotica, and calls this "fuckin' thoughtcrime".

Singal and Herzog discuss Prostasia's advocacy for the legality of child-like sex dolls, and a Discord chatroom "safe space" with hundreds of members that it "fiscally sponsored" that had both thirteen-year-olds and adult pedophiles in it. Herzog also mentions that the chatroom archives, then deletes, the chat history periodically after some months. The podcast defends the Prostasia organization, and said chatroom since there were reportedly "a ton of rules" including to prevent child grooming. "A fifteen-year-old in the group" told Herzog that he had never been groomed there but that he was suicidal; however Herzog acknowledges there was "at least one incident" of that kind.

Herzog argued that thirteen-year-olds were in the chatroom because "pedophilia typically emerges around the age of twelve or thirteen", so Singal later concludes "thirteen-year-old pedophiles should have a place to talk about how to manage their condition or orientation or whatever you want to call it." He adds that a problem with the subject is that people conflate destigmatizing discussions about one's attraction to children with destigmatizing the act of having sex with children, and he attributes this to "some leftist communities", an example he cites being "some actual pedophiles in like LGBT groups and stuff" though he acknowledges most LGBT people are against that.

They also discuss use of the term "minor-attracted person" ("MAP") as an alternative to the term "pedophile", and Herzog mentions her email exchange with an "actual pedophile" who explained that it was "pure hysteria" to believe the euphemism was coined to destigmatize pedophilia because it was "coined by mental health professionals and it's simply an umbrella term for pedophilia, hebephilia, et cetera." Herzog and Singal cite their own past work about pedophiles in The Stranger and New York magazine respectively as further reading on the topic, such as Singal's 2016 article "How Should Society Handle Pedophiles Who Haven't Hurt Anyone?" (which also heavily cites Cantor). After Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 arrest, Singal and Herzog argued it was not technically correct to call Epstein a pedophile; Singal also called this semantic distinction a "mainstream scientific opinion". It isn't clear how young Epstein's youngest victims were, but at least one accuser claims that he sought girls "as young as I could find them". One 2020 lawsuit alleges that he abused victims as young as eleven years old.

See also

• Kiwi Farms § Jesse Singal
• Matt Taibbi
• Jonah Goldberg

External links

• GLAAD profile — or maybe that's just "scuttlebutt"
• "The XX Factor: E7 - Jesse Singal and Kenneth Zucker"
• Posts tagged "Jesse Singal", at Science-Based Medicine
• "Jesse Singal Still Got More Wrong Than He Thinks", Emily Gorcenski
• "Jesse Singal Misrepresented a Trans Girl’s Medical History and She Called Him Out", Assigned Media
• "A critical commentary on follow-up studies and 'desistance' theories about transgender and gender-nonconforming children", also published in the International Journal of Transgender Health (2018)